This invention relates to a process for separating components of a fluid mixture. The invention also relates to a process for chemically converting components of fluid mixtures.
The methods for carrying out fluid mixture separation are legion, including chromatography, distillation, liquid extraction and membrane permeation. However, there are some fluid mixtures that cannot be separated by these techniques and some separations would be very costly if these techniques are used. Furthermore, some of these techniques are not applicable to chemical conversion of components of a fluid mixture. Thus there is a need for a different method of fluid mixture separation which can be carried out more cheaply than known methods in many instances and which can be used for chemical conversion.
Electrostatically charged particles have been used in the past to separate dust and other solid particles which are entrained in a gas. U.S. Pat. No. 2,924,294, patented Feb. 9, 1960, discloses a method wherein solid particles are removed from a gas by introducing small electrostatically charged pellets into the center of a rotating body of the gas. U.S. Pat. No. 4,072,477, patented Feb. 7, 1978, discloses the addition of small water droplets to an electrostatic precipitator wherein the water droplets are given an electrostatic charge just as the dust particles to be removed are also given an electrostatic charge. These and other similar methods are used only to remove solid particles from gases. They are not applicable to the separation and/or chemical conversion of components of a fluid mixture.